To Judge a Book
by Asturiet
Summary: When Shawn goes missing, the SBPD searches for him to no avail, but a miraculous lead will show the department that some idioms really are true. Mild Shawn!whump  NOTE: If you don't want to see spoilers for this story, don't read the reviews first.
1. Prologue: Skin Deep

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. No copyright infringement is intended, and no money is being made from this story. Or in other words: Psych? Not mine. The characters? Not mine. Santa Barbara? REALLY not mine. When in doubt, assume it's not mine and that I'm not making money off it.

**WARNINGS**: mild whump (mild torture), some angst, unasked-for body modification; will be a spoiler (if you squint) for "Bounty Hunters!" in a later chapter

Author's Note: I almost hesitate to call this a "story." It's more a collection of situations and scenes that make me happy onto which I pasted something that is second-step-cousin-twice-removed to a plot. Motivations are laughably thin, but hey, at least they're there. That's better than nothing, right? Also, after finishing this story (a few weeks ago - I like to let stories stew before I post them), two stories have emerged that have minor similarities to this one. One is "Shocking, Isn't It?" by WhiteKingdomAngel and the other is "Hopeless" by Syncop8ed Rhythm. I did not borrow or take inspiration from these stories, but if you like some of the themes in mine, you might also enjoy those two.

* * *

"I'm telling you, I didn't take the kid!"

Shawn and Gus watched from the observation room as Lassiter interrogated a burly biker guy. Jules was standing next to them, impassive as her partner pressed the suspect, pulling out all the stops to get him to confess.

More importantly, Lassiter wanted to find out where Jacob Cobb, 6, was hidden. The boy had been missing for three days, and the chances of ever finding him and getting him back to his parents were plummeting. Shawn almost didn't blame Lassie for being so hard on a guy who was, in the end, only _suspected_ of kidnapping the child.

"You had both motive and opportunity," Lassiter hissed. "Do you honestly expect me to believe that you didn't do this?"

True, the biker dude, Michael Stokes, did work with the kidnapped kid's father, and he WAS holding a grudge against the man, but...somehow it just didn't ring true to Shawn. There was something about the way the Stokes was acting...or, rather, not acting. He was telling the truth about his innocence, Shawn was sure of it. The problem was going to be getting Lassie to agree.

"I don't know what you believe, I just know that I didn't take the kid!"

"I don't know, Jules," Shawn said - convincing Jules was generally easier than convincing Lassiter, and it was a good first step. "This guy doesn't seem like the kidnapping type."

"People are capable of anything, Shawn," Jules returned implacably. "Besides, Lassiter's right, he had motive, means, AND opportunity."

"Yeah, but kidnapping a kid? The guy's got a kid about the same age as Jacob."

Juliet shrugged, but when she spoke Shawn could hear the beginnings of doubt in her voice. "He's not being charged, Shawn, we're just questioning him."

"So far."

After an hour of getting nowhere, Lassiter apparently had lost patience with Mr. Stokes. At one point Lassiter had gotten close enough that Shawn was starting to wonder if he was going to bite the man, but then the tall detective spun on his heel and left the room, joining the three of them in the observation room.

"I'll get him," Lassiter grumbled under his breath. "I will. It's only a matter of time."

"If he's the right guy," Shawn put in. He suppressed a cringe when Lassiter turned his laser-eyed glare on him, instead meeting the angry blue eyes calmly. "You don't know for sure, not yet."

"Don't know for sure?" Lassiter echoed, his tone knife-sharp. "He was the last one to see Jacob, AND he hates the kid's father. Besides, look at him!"

Shawn didn't glance into the observation room - he knew what Stokes looked like. Leather pants and vest, tattoos covering his arms, shoulders, and neck, some impressive piercings...sure, the guy didn't look like he'd be on the cover of GQ any time soon, but that didn't REALLY mean anything...did it?

"He's a tattoo artist, Lassie. If he didn't look like he just stepped out of a biker movie, no one would trust him." Shawn used his most soothing voice, hoping that it would calm the irate detective, though in the past it had usually had the opposite effect. There was a first time for everything, right?

"You know what, Spencer? I don't have time for your crap today. You aren't needed here: go home."

And with that, Lassiter turned and left the room, Juliet, after an apologetic glance back at Shawn, following close behind.

Shawn looked at Gus, who shrugged, then back at the man sitting calmly in the interrogation room. His spine was curved, his head dropped down onto his chest like it was too much work to sit upright. He looked the very picture of depression.

And there wasn't a thing Shawn could do about it.

* * *

"We need to solve this case, Gus," Shawn repeated as he collapsed into his desk chair. "Lassie's got the wrong guy."

"I don't know, Shawn - Juliet was right: motive, means, and opportunity. It's the police trifecta."

"Yeah, but it wasn't him." Shawn fell silent, staring fixedly at some point beyond Gus's head. Gus sighed to himself. Dealing with Shawn's antics was a constant test of temper and endurance, but in some ways, Gus preferred the craziness to this focused calm. Serious Shawn always meant something was wrong.

Unfortunately, there wasn't anything Gus could do - Shawn was focused on the case. Gus watched his friend until the grey-and-gold eyes blinked and shifted to re-examine the file on his desk, then shifted his attention to his own work. Keeping track of Psych's money was almost an exercise in futility with Shawn at the wheel (or even riding shotgun), and it took far more of Gus's attention than it should have.

Twenty minutes later, Gus was still deeply entrenched in the books when Shawn suddenly shouted "Got it!"

"What?" Gus asked, blinking as he came up out of the accounts like a salmon surfacing. "Got what?"

Shawn was already on his feet, gathering up the file on his way out the door.

"I know who took Jacob and where he is! Call Lassie; he needs to meet us there."

Gus grabbed his jacket and phone and followed his friend out the door. Sure, he wasn't going to finish the bookkeeping that day, but finding a lost kid was definitely worth it.

* * *

Author's Note(yes, again...sorry): I've been having a hard time trying to figure out what color James Roday's eyes are. So, in this story (and any others I might write), I'm going with grey and gold. That's the closest I can come to what I've seen, and I'm sticking to it.


	2. Turn About

I don't follow them all the time - someone would notice me, either the psychic or his partner, but I spend time near places they frequent. Certain coffee shops, restaurants, bars - they really like their food, those two. I sit in my truck and I watch them joking, laughing, and just generally going about their lives.

I hate them.

The world is wrong, everything is sideways and warped - how can those two just go on like everything is hunky-dory? Nothing is fine, not since they left.

Since my family left.

I growl under my breath as they cross the street in front of my shaded parking place, heading towards their favorite haunt, the little place that serves the best jerk chicken in town. I growl, but I don't move. I have been biding my time for months now, planning my revenge, ever since the psychic and his friends destroyed my life.

It's not the best revenge, I'll admit. I can't get to any of the cops, and Guster won't work, but the psychic...he'll do. And isn't he as guilty as the rest of them? Seeing the outside, judging me by the way I look, taking away my family...

...my little girl.

I take a deep breath, forcing my anger down deep into my gut as I make myself think. I can be fair, I can be logical. In my saner moments, I know that what happened isn't really Spencer's fault, any more than it's technically Detective Lassiter's. I blame them for their part in the mess, but, in the end, it was just a cruel twist of fate.

It wasn't their fault I was the most obvious suspect.

It wasn't their fault my wife believed them.

It wasn't their fault she left me.

It wasn't their fault she got sole custody.

Somehow, I don't really believe any of that.

So I sit and I watch and I wait. A few counties away my new house also waits, calmly sitting until I find the moment when I can set my plan into motion. My plan...

...my plan that won't change anything. But that doesn't matter. I have to do it. I have to know that SOMEONE knows how I feel. I have to share my pain with someone, anyone, even if it's only for the briefest of moments. There's a long road ahead of me and the payoff is pathetically small, but as stupid as I know I'm being, I can't seem to stop myself.

Besides, I've already lost my family; it might as well be for something I've done.


	3. Easy Bake Torture

Shawn woke to a pounding headache, a low hum, and an uncomfortably, almost painfully warm feeling on his shoulder. He groaned and tried to move away, but he was held in place by what felt like hundreds of straps, though it was probably closer to twenty. However many straps there were, he was completely immobilized, forced to hold still while some sadist held a light bulb on his shoulder.

He tried to see what was going on, who was doing this to him, but opening his eyes showed him the same unrelieved black as keeping them closed. A moment's thought and he realized that one of the straps he felt was a blindfold, which was something of a mixed blessing - sure, he couldn't see anything, but he also didn't have to worry about beams of light stabbing him in the eyes, which is what always seemed to happen when he had a headache.

Sighing, Shawn forced himself to relax under the straps. It was clear he wasn't going to get anywhere, so there was no reason to keep trying. All he would do was wear himself out. Instead, he fell back on his preferred method of getting out of trouble.

"Hey," he started. "What's up out there? Anyone home?" When there was no answer but the continuing burn across his skin, Shawn tried again. "Judging by the headache and the cotton mouth, I'm going to guess you've drugged me. Not really the best move - the police tend to frown on people drugging their consultants." Still nothing.

"Okaaaay, how about this: I'm a psychic. I know exactly who you are and why you're doing this, and I understand. Now, if you'll just let me go, we can figure something out."

The slow burn crept across his shoulder.

"Oh come on, give me something here!" Shawn cried, not caring that his voice had gotten a little loud and a lot strident.

"Shut up," a low voice growled, so quietly that Shawn almost couldn't understand it.

"Man, if you know who I am, then you know that's not gonna happen."

Suddenly the hum stopped and the heat cooled slightly, though there was some residual burn. Shawn breathed a sigh of relief as he heard footfalls moving away from him. Then he heard the distinct sounds of someone rummaging around in a drawer, and his blood froze. He wasn't sure what the guy was after in that drawer, but he had a sinking suspicion that, whatever it was, it wasn't good.

It didn't take long for his captor to find what he wanted. The footsteps returned, and a wide band of what felt like yet another leather strap was wrapped around his neck.

"Oh come on, another one?" Shawn whined. "Like I don't already have enough restraints. Seriously, has no one ever explained the concept of 'overboard' to you?"

"Shut up," the voice growled again, followed by a slight click.

Shawn actually thought about it for a second. Maybe being quiet would, for once in his life, be the way to go.

And then the burning started up again. No way was Shawn going to stay quiet through that.

So, once again, Shawn took a breath and opened his mouth to start talking his way out of yet another sticky situation. Unfortunately, with the first sound that came out of his mouth, a flash of pain shot through his throat. Shawn gasped, surprised that he couldn't feel blood dripping down his throat – for a second it had felt like someone had slit him from ear to ear.

_Okay, that's enough,_ he thought. _I've had enough of this._ Again he took a deep breath and opened his mouth, this time to scream, and again, the moment the first sound began, shooting, slashing, twisting pain grabbed hold of his throat and, for a long moment, didn't let go.

When he was finally able to breathe again, Shawn closed his mouth tight and considered the information he had at hand.

1. His captor was male, possibly someone he had met, since he was going to a lot of trouble to disguise his voice and keep Shawn blindfolded.

2. If this was supposed to be torture, which was questionable since his captor hadn't asked him any questions, it was the dumbest torture known to man. Whoever heard of giving someone a mild sunburn to get them to talk?

3. His captor really DIDN"T want him to talk, since from the lightning-bolt-like pain and the extra strap around his neck, Shawn guessed he'd been fitted with a shock collar like the ones people put on dogs to stop them from barking.

Great, a dog collar.

Though the very idea of being treated like an unruly pet put Shawn's teeth on edge, he forced himself, once again, to relax. Not only could he not move, now he couldn't speak, either, and there was no telling what his captor would do if he tried anything else. So Shawn settled into the chair or bench or whatever he was on and let the man slowly burn his shoulder.

* * *

"How can you not have found him?" Henry snapped. Lassiter opened his mouth to snap right back at the older man, but he swallowed his protest when he noticed that, despite the frustration and anger in the tone of his voice and the set of his shoulders, Mr. Spencer's eyes held only worry and fear.

Right. Yelling at the fathers of missing people, no matter how annoying, equaled bad.

So Lassiter took a deep breath and, as he had done every time he'd spoken to Henry in the week since Shawn had disappeared, shoved his own anger and frustration down deep inside where it wouldn't affect his calm response.

"We are doing everything we can, there just isn't anything to go on."

"You think I don't know that?" Henry growled. "I've been through his apartment eighty times; I've been over his office with a fine-toothed comb. I know there's nothing to go on." Lassiter just looked at the man, waiting for him to realize what he'd just said. Which he did.

"Oh God," the older man moaned as he sank down into O'Hara's chair. "The kid's supposed to give us something to go on, anything. How are we supposed to find him if he can't even remember what I taught him?"

Lassiter frowned, but ignored Mr. Spencer's strange statements. The man didn't seem to want a response, anyway. At least not from him.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Spencer," O'Hara said as she came back from doing research on their current case. Yes, finding Shawn Spencer was important, but after being missing for a week and with absolutely no leads, other, more pressing cases had come to the fore.

Henry looked up at her, his face weary, worn, and old. "Yeah, I know." Sighing and rubbing one hand over his bristly scalp, he said "Let me know if you find anything." And then he left.

Juliet and Lassiter watched him go, waiting until he was long out of range before they said anything.

"I'm impressed, Carlton," Juliet said quietly.

"What?"

"You've been...very understanding," she said, glancing quickly at him before turning to her desk and sitting down.

Lassiter shrugged. "He's annoying, walking in here every day," he replied. He paused, then admitted, "But it's his son that's missing. I can't really blame him for being pushy."

"Like I said," Juliet returned. "I'm impressed."

Lassiter snorted and turned back to the open case file on his desk. "Don't be. Being understanding won't find Spencer."

"No, but it makes things a little easier."

* * *

Shawn woke with a start as the door to his…whatever it was, cell, room, whatever, opened. He listened as the familiar heavy tread approached, paused, and then headed off in a different direction. Shawn hopped to his feet, knowing from experience that if he wasn't standing when his captor got a few feet away, he'd just be pulled off the chair.

The tug on his wrists came a bare two seconds later, and Shawn obediently followed the footsteps, his various chains chiming musically against each other. After a few yards Shawn felt the concrete under his feet shift to the familiar rubber track, and he stopped, waiting while his hands were chained to the treadmill. When the beep sounded, he was ready to start jogging.

As he settled into his groove, Shawn let his mind wander, as he always did. His favorite starting topic was "how long have I been here?" He thought it was longer than a few days - a few weeks seemed more likely - but there was no way to tell for sure. The blindfold was kept in place at all times, so if there were day/night cycles where he was being kept, Shawn wasn't aware of them.

What he did know was that this had to be the strangest torture known to man. If it even WAS torture - it was kind of hard to tell. Honestly, for the past while, it had been more like enforced exercise than torture. Sure, when he'd first been taken, there had been session after session of what felt like hours of mild burning, but after a while those had stopped, and the lingering discomfort had faded. There had also been some truly hellish attacks on his ears and his nose, but again, it'd been a while since his captor had hurt him in any way.

What did happen was running. Lots of running. At irregular intervals (at least Shawn THOUGHT the intervals were irregular, but, again, no way to know for sure), Shawn was put on a treadmill and made to run for a while. At first that had been its own kind of torture, as Shawn wasn't known for taking jogs around the park, and his captor apparently had no idea how to slowly ease someone into a running regime. After a while, though, he'd started to get used to it.

Strangely, Shawn appreciated the running. It meant that his muscles wouldn't atrophy from sitting blindfolded in a chair for however long he'd been stuck there. Now if only he could get his captor to understand that making him run every day (twice a day? three times?) meant that he also had to feed him more. That was the only thing that made this captivity anything like torture: the fact that, while he was fed, he was never fed enough. That and the collar.

That damn collar. Shawn had thought that, after a while, it would be removed. I mean come on - he'd learned his lesson, he wasn't going to talk anymore. But apparently his captor didn't get that, because the thing never came off, nor was it switched off.

On the other hand, maybe that wasn't so strange. It had taken a remarkably long time for Shawn to learn not to talk, though maybe that wouldn't have surprised the people who knew him. It just seemed like every time something new or different happened, Shawn had to comment on it. Of course, when he tried, he got zapped, and then he had to spend ten or twenty very long seconds relearning how to do things like breathe and swallow.

_So yeah,_ Shawn thought as he jogged, steadily thumping along on the treadmill beneath his feet. _This has to go on record as the weirdest torture ever._


	4. Masterpiece

It's finished, or close enough. My masterpiece. It's fitting, I suppose. I have to leave behind everything I knew, everything I did. I can't stay with my art, not if I expect to hide from them. They'll chase me, of course, and they'll be right to. My only chance is to change everything about myself.

That's fitting, too.

So I poured my heart out into this, my last piece. My masterpiece. It's beautiful - more detailed, more extensive, more alive than anything I've done before. I almost wish I could take pictures, lay claim to it, but if I want to stay free, that would be a very bad idea. All I can do is gaze at it in its entirety, try to sear it into my memory.

I'll put the finishing touches on tonight. Not to the piece itself, of course, that's already perfect, more the frame, the setting. I've got it all ready to go, I just need to put the psychic under. Can't have him figuring out what I'm doing too early. He'll get it eventually.

That's another thing I wish I could take a picture of, but I won't even be able to see it. I'll have to disappear long before the psychic realizes what's going on, before he knows my pain. All this time, and I won't even get to see the payoff.

But I knew that going in, and I've already made peace with it. Sure, I'd LIKE to see his face when he realizes, and I'd love to feel the betrayal, the hurt, even the confusion, but...no. It's going to be hard enough getting there and out again without getting grabbed myself. I'll have to be content with imagining the scene, seeing it in my mind's eye.

It's not what I'd like, but it's enough.

I look at the psychic where he sits in the chair, and I smile.

By this time tomorrow, it will be done, and I will be on the road to a new life. It'll still hurt, of course, what happened to me, but knowing that someone out there knows how I feel, how I felt, what it was like...it'll help. It's already helped, and I'm not even finished.

Tomorrow night, I'll start anew. Tomorrow night, I'll leave this life behind. And I'll never look back.

* * *

Author's Note: I wasn't going to do any more of these, but, um...no one's reviewed. I also never wanted to be the kind of person who begs for reviews, but...PLEASE, please review. Nothing is more discouraging than posting something and getting literally not a single review. Obviously, if you don't think the story's worth the time to review then don't bother, but I was kind of hoping that at least one person would like this enough to give me something. Honestly, people, throw me a bone, here.


	5. Same Stuff, Different Day

When he woke up, it was hard to think.

Heck, it was hard to do anything. He felt slow and stiff...and his mind was cloudy, too. It didn't help that the blindfold had finally come off, but instead of showing him where he was and what was going on, all he could see was brightness. Sounds and lights and movement swirled around him, and all of it was too much, too new, too fast. He couldn't see or hear anything because he was seeing and hearing everything. He shut his eyes, but there wasn't anything he could do about his ears, and the constant stream of incoherent sound made him want to vomit.

So he did.

Then he regretted it, because it made the pounding in his head even louder. It almost drowned out the cacophony around him. Almost.

Shawn tried marshalling his wits, but he only partially succeeded. He managed to figure out that, whatever was going on, he probably wasn't in the same place he had been for the past...however long it was. Not with all the sound and the movement. He was also pretty sure that he'd been drugged - the nausea and the cotton mouth were pretty clear signs of that.

Clearly the world had gone insane, but Shawn was having trouble deciding whether that was good for him or bad. On the one hand, his situation didn't seem to have improved, or even changed very much. He was still stuck in the same uncomfortable chair, for example, and he was clearly still captive. Although…he had to admit that he hadn't had so few restraints since he'd been taken. The ever present collar still circled his throat (of course...stupid thing), and something bound his wrists behind his back (wait, were those handcuffs? Nah...), but other than that it was almost like he was loose. His feet certainly didn't seem to be attached to each other, though from the way he kept falling down, they might as well have been.

Sometimes the noise grew louder. Once was when his captor removed the bonds on his hands. The restraints were removed, his hands were yanked forward, and the noise got so loud that he slapped his hands over his ears.

Apparently that wasn't allowed - his hands were grabbed and yanked back behind his back, the restraints were put back on (definitely handcuffs, a change from his captor's more usual fare of leather straps), and he was shoved back into the same hard, unyielding chair he'd been in for the past...time...span.

Whatever.

Shawn didn't know what was going on, but he did know that he would give almost anything to be back in the room he'd been in for so long. At least that room was calm, quiet, dark. Well, maybe it was dark - it was hard to tell while blindfolded. Whatever it was, it was a lot easier to take in than this new place's noise, and Shawn found himself wishing desperately that he was back in his captor's room with the darkness and the quiet and the too little food and the treadmill.

At least he was used to it.


	6. Frustration

Lassiter ground his teeth together and glared at the strung-out scumbag seated across from him. He'd seen hundreds of these guys, creepy, skinny things with their tattoos and their black hair and their ridiculous piercings, so out of their mind on whatever they could shove into their veins that they barely knew what was going on around them.

This one wasn't even managing that. Lassiter sneered as the junkie's head lolled to one side and his eyes squeezed shut, but really, he was glad. The guy had the creepiest eyes Lassiter had ever seen, like two black pits in his face. Those eyes were way more intimidating than anything the man had done to himself. Who could be frightened of arms covered in tattoos when the guy turned flat, expressionless black eyes on you?

"We get anything?" O'Hara asked as she strode up to join him against the counter.

"Almost nothing," Lassiter growled, his frustration setting his teeth against each other once again.

"What's 'almost'?" Juliet asked, and Lassiter forced his jaw muscles to loosen enough to let him speak.

"He had the license of a Joshua Hart of Encino on him. The description matches and the picture looks about right, but we can't know for sure that that's him."

"Why not?"

"He removed his fingerprints."

Lassiter watched his partner's eyes widen. Removing one's fingerprints could be accomplished a few different ways, but none of them were comfortable. From what he'd seen, it looked like this guy had frozen his off, probably using liquid nitrogen or dry ice.

It was not the act of an innocent man.

"Does he know where Shawn is?" O'Hara asked, and Lassiter snorted.

"He had Spencer's wallet on him, covered in blood, and he showed up on Spencer's motorcycle, so I'm thinking yeah, he probably does."

"You sent the wallet to the lab?" Juliet asked, and Lassiter nodded tightly.

"They're testing the blood to see if it's Spencer's."

They stared at the suspect in frustrated silence for a moment before Juliet snapped.

"What kind of an idiot shows up in front of a police station on a missing man's motorcycle?"

Lassiter snorted, a half-smirk painfully twisting his lips. "He's so out of it I doubt he knows where he is, much less what he was riding. It's a miracle he didn't crash the damn thing."

He watched alarm streak across his partner's face as she realized how easily they could've lost the only lead they'd gotten towards finding Shawn, followed by another flash of alarm as she pictured the innocent civilians that could've been hurt in such a crash. When the inevitable guilt that she thought of the lead first and THEN the innocents darkened her features, Lassiter sighed and pushed away from the counter. Suddenly he wasn't quite so angry.

"I'm gonna try questioning him," Lassiter said. When O'Hara opened her mouth to protest, he held up a hand. "No, O'Hara, you're not helping. This case is hitting you way too hard - you're taking it personally."

"We're all taking it personally," she replied, and Lassiter nodded shortly, feeling his face twist as his own smoldering rage flared up. He tossed a hot glare at the junkie, who, of course, didn't notice, before turning back to his partner.

"True, but it's been worse for you. I'm doing this."

She clearly wanted to protest, but after a few moments of trying to decide what to say, Lassiter watched Juliet resign herself to his decision.

"Can I at least watch?" she asked, and he nodded again.

"Be my guest."

* * *

Juliet managed to stay in the observation room while her partner questioned the suspect. Barely. She paced back and forth, biting her fingernails, while Lassiter pulled out every trick in the book. He tried threatening, he tried shouting, he tried calm and collected questioning, but the man across the table never uttered a word.

She was starting to doubt the man COULD utter a word. He was clearly out of his mind on something; he probably didn't even know where he was, let alone what Lassiter was saying. Heck, he might not even know someone was talking to him.

Juliet paused in her pacing to stare into the interrogation room and shivered. There was just something...off about the guy. True, there were a lot of things off about the guy, not the least of which was that he knew something about Shawn's disappearance but he wasn't telling them, but there was something specific that was bugging her.

It might've been the guy's eyes, which, when he actually managed to open them, were a flat, cold black. Juliet actually considered that for a second, then shook her head. No, that was creepy, but that wasn't what was bothering her. Slowly she ran her gaze over the guy in the room with Lassiter, trying to pinpoint what, exactly, had gotten her hackles up. For the most part, he looked just like a hundred other drugged-out messes that had gotten dragged into this room. Everything about him screamed bad guy, from the overuse of black leather to the piercings to the tattoos.

The beard was different, though. That wasn't a normal part of the bad guy dress code. The more Juliet focused on it, the more sure she was that that was the problem. It was bad enough that the guy had a beard at all, a heavy, almost bushy thing that obscured half his face, but the damn thing was the same inky, dull black of his hair. On its own or in a different color, maybe the facial hair wouldn't have been too bad, but as it was it was kind of…disturbing.

The whole package was disturbing.

But she had to put all that aside. It didn't matter how scary he looked, he was connected to Shawn's disappearance, and he was going down. One side of the young detective's mouth quirked up as she watched her partner have one last go at the creepy guy in the chair.

Suddenly, Lassiter made a sound of disgust deep in his throat and spun about on his heel, leaving the interrogation room. When he appeared in the observation room seconds later, Juliet started to sputter.

"You're quitting? Already?"

Lassiter stared at her like she was an idiot. "What do you mean 'already'? I've been in there for an hour!"

"You've questioned other suspects a lot longer than that."

"Yeah, but those suspects actually HEARD what I was saying." Juliet watched as her partner took a deep breath, visibly calming himself. "Look, O'Hara," he said, his voice carefully controlled and even. "You know as well as I do that that guy is too strung out to answer any questions. It was a long shot to try to talk to him, and it didn't pan out."

"Maybe if you lean a little harder on him," Juliet began, but Lassiter stopped her with a shake of his head.

"Then we'll have leaned on him, and he'll still be too strung out to talk to us." Rubbing one hand over his face wearily, he sighed. "Look, I want to find Spencer too, but we're not going to get anywhere tonight. The smart move right now is to put this guy in the drunk tank overnight, let some whatever he's on work its way out of his system. Maybe in the morning he'll be able to do something more than sway."

Juliet glanced into the interrogation room and saw that her partner was right: the suspect was swaying slightly in his chair, his chin resting on his chest as he barely stayed upright.

"Fine," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. She didn't like it, but Lassiter was right.


	7. Awakening

Shawn woke slowly, his head pounding with one of the worst hangovers he had ever had. That was the only excuse he had for not knowing immediately that something had changed. As he slowly swam back to consciousness, his mind automatically cataloged the sensory input he was receiving.

1. He was cold.

2. He was lying on something hard. And cold. Which was probably why he was cold.

3. Something smelled less than fresh. No, strike that, something smelled truly terrible.

4. None of the above were things he had experienced since he'd been taken.

That last point, more of a deduction than a catalog, had Shawn opening his eyes long before he was ready. Luckily, there wasn't a great deal of light where he was, so he wasn't treated to the sensation of ice picks of light stabbing into his eyes.

Here's to small favors.

It took him a few minutes, even without bright lights and stabbing pain, to get used to seeing again. It'd been a while since he'd been without a blindfold, and the hazy memories he had of the last time he'd been awake didn't count, not when all he remembered was light and fuzziness and psychedelic spinning.

So he took his time, focusing first on something near him...what looked like old, stained concrete. Once that was firmly fixed in his mind, Shawn took a chance and let his eyes move, slowly, as he took in the rest of wherever he was.

It was...a room. Probably a cell. Small, almost windowless - there was a small opening up near the ceiling, but it was barred. The whole room was done in various shades of gray concrete, and most of the surfaces were splotched with unnameable stains. Shawn smiled when he caught sight of a stain that looked like Val Kilmer, and then another that resembled a pineapple. They reminded him of similar stains in the SBPD station's drunk tank.

Wait, no. They were exactly the same as the stains in the SBPD station drunk tank. Casting caution to the wind, Shawn let his eyes dart around the room, taking in detail after detail that confirmed his suspicions: he was, in fact, in the drunk tank at the Santa Barbara Police Department.

His first thought was that that explained the smell. His second thought was that his friends had finally found him, and he yelped for joy, a yelp that was cut quite short when an all-too-familiar pain seized his larynx and wouldn't let go. Spots had begun to swim across his vision and blackness was eating the edges before he was able to breathe again.

He was still catching his breath when the door to the cell opened.

Shawn glanced up from where he was still curled up on the floor, gasping, and saw one of the most wonderful sights ever to be seen by sight (wait...what? Did that make sense? Hmmm…maybe he was still a little loopy). Nearly six and a half feet of Buzz McNabb was towering over him, and through the hoarse gasping for breath, Shawn managed the biggest grin ever attempted by a human being. He tried to wave, but for the first time since he'd woken up he realized that his hands were still cuffed...behind his back. Okay, so waving was out.

Standing wasn't easy either, but that Shawn knew from experience. With hands bound behind your back it generally takes a couple of minutes to maneuver into a position that you can stand from, but apparently Buzz didn't want to wait, because he reached out a hand and grabbed one of Shawn's arms to help him up.

Or that's what Shawn thought.

Seconds later, Shawn was on his feet alright, but that was only because Buzz had yanked him up so hard that Shawn's choices had been either put his feet down and stand or fall flat on his face. Shawn turned a questioning look on the big officer, but Buzz either didn't understand what Shawn was trying to ask or wasn't paying attention.

Or maybe it was something else. Shawn took in the lowered brows and the solemn expression, both of which were very out of place on happy-go-lucky McNabb. Shawn saw those details, and he saw other things, like Buzz's stiff posture and clenched jaw. He felt things, too, like the rough, bruisingly tight grip the big man had on Shawn's upper arm.

Something was very, very wrong.

Buzz didn't say anything, he just strode out of the cell, dragging Shawn behind him. Shawn had to jog on unsteady legs to keep up with the big man's long, businesslike strides, but he didn't try to make McNabb slow down - he was getting the unsettling feeling that Buzz wouldn't have a problem simply dragging him if he didn't keep up.

Shawn was having such trouble staying upright that it took him a minute before he could pay any attention to where they were going and what was going on around them. When he finally managed to turn his gaze towards something other than the placement of his own feet, his blood chilled.

Everyone in the station was looking at him. No, that wasn't right. Everyone in the station was _glaring_ at him. From their path Shawn figured they were on their way to the interrogation rooms (and what a worrisome thought that was), and on the way they passed officer after officer, employee after employee, and every last one of them glared at him with steely eyes and lowered brows. With every furious stare Shawn shrank a little more into himself, his back hunching and his shoulders rounding with the weight of their collected fury.

But that fury was feather-light compared to the rage that found him in the hall outside the interrogation rooms. Once they'd gotten to the right floor, Buzz handed him over to Lassiter. Shawn took one look at the detective's cold blue eyes and blank expression and gulped. Whatever he'd done to piss Buzz and everyone else off had clearly hit Lassiter just as hard. And he couldn't even talk his way out of whatever it was - why hadn't they removed the stupid collar?

Lassiter hauled him forward so abruptly that Buzz seemed gentle, especially when they went around a corner and Lassiter "misjudged" the turn, slamming Shawn into the wall. It wasn't exactly police brutality, and nothing actually got broken. Quite.

Shawn was shaking his head in an attempt to clear his now once-again fuzzy vision when he heard shouting from down the hall. Lassiter didn't stop, striding quickly in the direction of the voices. At first Shawn thought about trying to slow Lassiter, maybe get him to turn around, but as they got closer, Shawn could pick out individual voices, and he found they were familiar. By the time they got to the interrogation room Lassiter wanted, Shawn could not only hear the shouting, he could see the enraged faces doing the shouting. He could take in every nuance of flashing eyes and bared teeth, every clenched jaw and fist. Shawn knew, without a doubt, that the two men being held back by four burly uniforms wanted to, if not kill him, then at least beat the snot out of him, maybe several times over.

It wouldn't have bothered him so much if the men in question hadn't been his dad and Gus.

Shawn's mouth fell open and his previously cold blood froze solid in his veins. He'd never seen his dad so livid, even when he'd done something REALLY stupid. And Gus...Gus didn't do angry. Not like that.

But there it was, two screaming men who might as well have been foaming at the mouth were spouting threats and obscenities at him, and they were the two men he was closest to in the world.

What the hell had happened?

Pushing aside the worst of his shock, Shawn tried to make out what they were saying between swearing and spitting, but it wasn't easy. He thought he heard something about giving something back or telling them something, but it was hard to figure it out out-of-context.

Not to mention that, after a quick nod at the two women behind Shawn's dad and Gus, Lassiter manhandled Shawn into the interrogation room and plopped him down in the chair.

Shawn closed his eyes, not wanting to see the room. As if he really needed to - all the interrogation rooms looked pretty similar, and he'd been in each one many times before, though not usually on this side of the table.

No, he didn't need to see the room, though he quickly found that he also didn't want to see what played in his mind.

Buzz, glaring at him and hauling him through the station.

Lassiter, cold and silent.

His dad, foaming at the mouth.

Gus, livid to the point of insanity.

And, behind them, Juliet and Chief Vick, both of them pale and staring, their lips pressed together in strangely similar expressions of unspeakable rage.

Shawn swallowed heavily, trying to keep from vomiting all over the table in front of him, and leaned forward to place his forehead against the cool surface. The images cycled through his mind's eye, and as much as he wanted to dismiss them, to see something else, he couldn't.

_What did I do?_ he thought again. _What could I possibly have done to make everyone so angry?_ Shawn was almost sure that, without those officers there, either his dad or Gus literally would have killed him.

_Shouldn't I remember doing something that bad?_

Desperately, he ran through his memories of his life, but other than the whole pretending to be a psychic thing, which, while it would piss off the police department, wouldn't do the same for Gus and his dad, he hadn't done anything that would make people THAT angry. Annoyed, yes. Frustrated, sure. But enraged?

On the other hand, his captor had seemed enraged, at least at first.

Maybe he HAD done something.

Shawn yanked his head up from the table when the door handle clicked. He wasn't entirely sure who would be coming to question him, since he was clearly here for questioning on something extremely bad, but it was just Lassiter. Just cold, angry, just-barely-humane-treatment Lassiter. Walking into the room, sitting down opposite Shawn, with a file. Sitting down to ask him questions.

Questions that, with the damn collar still around his throat, he couldn't answer.

Oh shit.

"Hello, Mr. Hart." Lassiter began calmly.

Wait. What?

"Do you know why you're here?"

Um, no. Shawn shook his head slightly, flinching when Lassiter's lips pressed together in anger and his eyes turned another few notches colder.

"You're here to help me find someone who's missing."

Okay, lost again. Shawn stared at Lassiter, trying to read something from his face, his posture, his tone, anything that would give him some clue as to what the heck was going on here. Who was missing? Why was he a suspect? Why were Gus and his dad so upset about it?

Shawn's fingers itched to open the file Lassie had set between them on the table, but he couldn't, not with his hands still cuffed behind his back. Luckily, Lassiter opened the file for him.

Well..."luckily" was something of a relative term. Shawn watched in growing confusion as Lassiter showed him a picture of...himself. Shawn stared into his own handsomely grinning face with its magnificent coif, then at a picture of his apartment...the Psych office...and, finally, his motorcycle.

"Where is Shawn Spencer?"

Shawn yanked his gaze away from the photos and stared at Lassiter, but there wasn't any duplicity in the man's gaze, only cold, cold anger. Shawn stared harder, looking deeper, and finally saw what he'd been trying not to notice from the moment Buzz had come to the drunk tank: Lassiter's eyes held absolutely no recognition. The detective had meant his last question exactly as he'd asked it. It wasn't a philosophical question, it wasn't some kind of joke; Lassiter simply didn't recognize the person sitting right in front of him.

"Answer me!" he yelled suddenly, blasting Shawn with a face full of Lassie-breath. But Shawn didn't answer, couldn't answer. How was he supposed to tell them where he was when he was sitting right in front of them? Better yet, how was he supposed to do it without talking?

With viper-like quickness, Lassiter snatched a handful of Shawn's...whatever it was he was wearing...a leather vest, Shawn finally saw, and yanked Shawn out of his chair and half over the table.

"You listen to me, you little scumbag," the detective hissed. "Those people have been looking for Spencer for weeks. WEEKS! And you're the first lead we've had, the ONLY lead we've had. So you'd better start talking, because if you don't talk to me, I might just send in Spencer's father."

Lassiter dropped Shawn abruptly, so that he fell back into the hard chair with an audible thump, but the detective hadn't quite finished his speech.

Getting out of his chair and pulling himself to his full height, Lassiter stared down at Shawn where he was cowering in his chair, his hands cuffed behind him and still reeling from whatever his captor had given him.

"I'm not buying this silent act," he spat. "I am going to go outside for a few minutes to let you think about what you know, and, when I come back, you are going to tell me. Everything. Even things you thought you didn't know. You are going to help me find Shawn Spencer." He pointed one long finger at the one-way mirror. "You are going to help those people get him back."

Shawn turned, even though he knew there was nothing to see, and glanced where Lassie had pointed: the big mirror that covered the wall. He knew who was behind it, watching this catastrophe, but he wouldn't be able to see them, not through that glass. All he would see was...

...himself?

No, surely not, that couldn't be him. The last time he'd checked, he wasn't some creepy-looking guy with greasy black hair and piercings and tattoos all up and down his arms. There had to be something wrong with the mirror, that was all. Something was wrong with the mirror.

That clearly wasn't him, no sir. He shook his head...and the person in the mirror shook his. He froze...and the creepy guy in the mirror stiffened in shock. He leaned forward slowly...and the demonic black eyes moved towards him.

Shawn screamed.


	8. Observation

"Well that was weird."

Lassiter would have snapped at Guster for such an inane comment, but the druggie's behavior had startled everyone. One minute the guy's almost happy, stumbling along behind McNabb like it's the greatest place in the world to be, and the next he's scared of his own reflection. Literally.

"Definitely weird," O'Hara said, and Spencer senior snorted.

"Probably surprised by his own reflection," the older man said. "Damn druggie doesn't even know what he looks like."

Lassiter nodded slightly. That was how he'd read it too - the man caught sight of himself and flipped out. Lassiter had had a better view than most of them, being in the room with the guy, and he was sure that the second the scumbag had figured out he was looking at himself, he'd yelped, a blast of sound that was curiously cut off, and shoved his chair away from the mirror as hard as he could. The creep had managed to shove himself all the way against the far wall, but he was still facing the one-way mirror, staring at it.

The five of them watched, admittedly unnerved, as the suspect stared at his own reflection, his black eyes wide as he scrutinized the image.

"Still," the Chief said. "Most people aren't quite so surprised by their own reflection."

Lassiter came to attention, his head whipping around to meet the Chief's gaze. "You think there's something going on here, Chief?" he asked.

Vick paused, pressing her lips together in thought. "Maybe, maybe not. It's odd, anyway."

"You can say that again," Guster muttered, staring at the suspect.

"I don't care if there's 'something going on,'" Henry hissed. "That bastard knows where my son is!"

"Henry," the Chief said, her voice soothing and even. "We don't know that for sure."

"He had Shawn's bike, he had Shawn's wallet. Karen, that wallet was covered in my son's blood!"

"Mr. Spencer, you will calm down or I will have you removed from this station."

Henry paused. Karen Vick may have been an old friend, but she had never been someone Henry wanted to cross. Even when she was a rookie, there'd been something hard and no-nonsense about her, something that required obedience.

Damn, she was a good Chief.

Marshalling his anger, Henry nodded once, not trusting himself to speak. This was the only lead they'd gotten towards finding his son; he could control himself long enough to see where it went.

Vick watched as Henry pulled himself together, then nodded once, her movement an unconscious copy of his own, and turned back to the one-way mirror.

"Well, at least now we know he can talk," Lassiter said into the sudden silence.

"How do you know that?" Guster asked, not taking his eyes away from the perp.

"That scream a minute ago - he can clearly make sounds."

"That doesn't necessarily mean he can talk," Guster countered. "He could have a language impairment of some kind."

Lassiter glared at the younger man. "I thought you wanted to find Spencer," he snapped.

"I do!"

"Well then stop siding with the criminal, Guster!"

"I wasn't siding with him! I was just pointing out-"

"Gentlemen!" Vick interrupted, her voice cutting through the room like a whip. "Let's save the arguments for a less enclosed area, shall we?" Turning to Lassiter, she folded her arms over her chest, her expression 100% business. "Carlton, are you ready to go back in there?"

"Absolutely."

"Then have at it." Lassiter nodded and started for the door, only to be stopped by a hand on his arm just before he made it out.

"And Carlton," Vick said, her gaze steady and intent, her grip on his arm firm. "No more contact, okay?"

Lassiter paused, then nodded sharply.

* * *

Author's Note: This isn't the best chapter, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. It reads as filler...and it might actually BE filler. I was sure there was a point to having this here when I wrote it. That said, I wanted to post the next chapter all on its own, so this ended up getting posted on its own as well, even though it's a bit short. My apologies if you were hoping for lots and lots of Shawn time - you'll get some tomorrow.


	9. Lucky Shot

Shawn wasn't confused.

No, confusion was something that happened during math tests, or while setting up a stereo. Confusion wasn't a strong enough word to encompass what, exactly, it was that Shawn was feeling.

Shawn was completely and utterly bewildered.

He hadn't known how long he had been with his captor, but judging by the reflection in the one-way mirror, it had been a few weeks, at least. Probably not too much longer than a month, though, or his hair would've grown out more.

His hair. How could that...that...smelly sink sponge have touched his mane? Have DYED his mane? And black? It looked horrible! Had he no pride?

Shawn wasn't sure if he was pleased or annoyed that his captor (because who else would've dyed Shawn's hair?) had taken the time to make sure his eyebrows and beard matched his hair. On the one hand, he had to salute the attention to detail. On the other, now his face was covered with icky black stuff just like his head.

Pulling his gaze away from the travesty of his hair took a monumental effort of will, but Shawn managed it and turned his attention to the rest of his face - what little of it he could see past the lumberjack beard. The first thing he noticed was the glint of metal. His ears had been pierced (a LOT), studs running up the edges of both of them, and there was a ring hanging below his nose like a bull's.

Ew.

A chain ran from the nose ring to the bottom stud in his left ear, swinging every time he moved his head. Shawn had to admit that that at least made a statement. He wasn't sure what the statement was, but it was a statement.

Beyond the new hardware, the bit of Shawn's face between hair and beard was pale, probably from being out of the sun for a month. Unfortunately, that paleness only made the contrast between skin and hair more extreme, and it set off the blackness of his eyes.

Those had to be contacts. Now that he knew they were there, Shawn could feel the edges of the contacts scraping against the insides of his eyelids when he blinked. It was an odd feeling, but then it was an odd look as well, and more than a little creepy.

Shawn let his gaze travel downward over the rest of his body in the mirror, but there didn't seem to be any more huge changes. He was pretty thin, too thin, really, but that was to be expected since his captor kept making him run but never fed him enough. The skin he could see was pale, and he was dressed in an open black leather vest, no shirt, and tight black jeans. Add to that the black, studded strip of leather that circled his neck and the matching wristbands, and he could've gone to a goth party.

Ah yes. Shawn Spencer: goth biker extraordinaire. At least his captor hadn't put eyeliner on him.

The most major change to his body was on his arms. He craned his neck in an effort to see them where they were locked behind his body, but he couldn't quite get the right angle. All he could see was the occasional flash of bright color from his shoulders. He tried looking at his arms in the mirror, but again, all he could see was washes of color. The damn contacts must've been doing something to his eyesight, 'cause he could usually see better than this.

For a moment, Shawn let himself hope that the bright color on his arms wasn't permanent, that it was some kind of rub-on or temporary tattoo, but his annoyingly perfect memory chimed in with a reminder of the early days with his captor, when that slow burn had traveled over his shoulders, his biceps, all down his arms.

Shit.

Shawn was pulled from his reverie when the door once again clicked, and Lassie strode into the room, the cold glare still firmly fixed on his face.

"Okay Hart," the tall man spat. "You're going to answer my questions, and you're going to do it NOW."

There it was again, that name: Hart. Shawn looked at Lassiter's tense posture once, then a niggling thought at the back of his mind had him looking down at himself, seeing again the black leather vest with its chains, the black jeans and boots, and the pale, skinny body the clothing covered. He glanced back at the mirror, at the black hair, black eyes, and prominent tattoos.

Oh.

OH.

Relief swept through Shawn in a wave, followed swiftly by annoyance. Okay, so on the one hand, the reason everyone was treating him like a criminal was because they didn't recognize him. On the other hand, how could they not recognize him? Sure, he was thinner, paler, and dressed differently, and sure, he'd acquired a rather impressive set of tattoos, but come ON, couldn't they just look in his eyes...

...his pitch black eyes. Hm. Okay, so no, but still, his voice...

...still no. Right, but surely his manly jaw...

...which was hidden under heavy, black beard.

His nose! His nose was exactly the same! Okay, so it was pierced, and there was a slender chain connecting it to one ear, but still, it was clearly his nose.

Hm. So maybe it made a certain amount of sense that no one recognized him. But still, the thought that his own father couldn't see through the cosmetic changes made Shawn feel antsy and shifty. Had he had so little effect on his friends' lives? Had he made so little impression?

Well THAT just didn't seem right.

"HEY!" Lassiter shouted, slamming one hand down on the table. Shawn jerked in his chair, turning to face the head detective. It occurred to Shawn, as he took in the flashing eyes and the way Lassie's face had turned bright red, that maybe he should be paying a little more attention to his surroundings. He had the distinct impression that Lassiter had been talking to him for a few minutes. Oops.

"Now you listen here, you pathetic excuse for a human being. I have a missing police consultant and a bunch of people who are REALLY worried about the guy, and I've got you showing up in front of the police station with the guy's wallet, which was covered in his blood."

Wow. That was bad. Where had the blood come from? He didn't remember bleeding...

"...so if you don't tell me what I want to know, I'm going to toss you into lockup with the rest of the junkies and we'll see how well you fare."

Oooo...yeah, that was REALLY bad. Shawn grimaced, noting that Lassiter's anger actually let up a notch when he did. One thing Shawn was very sure about was that he didn't want to end up in lock up. Ever, really.

"I see that you believe me," Lassie continued, his voice softening slightly into almost a croon. "So," he began, pushing the happy Shawn photo towards Shawn again. "Where is Shawn Spencer?"

Shawn stared at Lassiter. He wanted to answer the detective, really, but how? How do you say "I'm actually the person you're looking for, not the kidnapper" with yes and no headshakes? As if Lassie would even believe him. Shawn knew Lassiter, they'd, albeit reluctantly sometimes, worked together for years. Shawn knew quite well that once Lassie decided someone was guilty, it would take completely overwhelming evidence to change his mind, and simply saying "I'm Shawn!" probably wouldn't be enough to do it.

Somehow Shawn had to get out of this mess, but Lassiter wasn't likely to help. No, what Shawn had to do was to get someone else in the room with him. Someone a bit more open-minded, someone who was better at looking beneath the surface than Lassie.

Of course, considering the fury he'd seen on his way into the interrogation room, clearly his friends weren't as good at "looking beneath the surface" as Shawn thought.

Still, that was probably his best bet, at least until he figured out some way of getting the damn shock collar off his neck. Or the cuffs off his wrists. Or both.

_Well,_ Shawn thought as he turned his attention back to the irate detective across the table. _Lassie's not going to do either of those things, no matter how much I hint_. So, the only choice Shawn had was to swap Lassiter for someone else. Anyone else.

What was the quickest way to get Lassiter thrown out of the interrogation room?

Shawn met Lassiter's eyes, staring deep into the angry blue depths. And then, Shawn smiled, a slow twist of one side of his mouth that only the detective could see. He watched, amused, as Lassiter changed from angry back to completely livid, but it still wasn't quite enough. So, steeling himself for the inevitable reaction, Shawn puckered up and made a kissing motion.

Lassiter's punch was so fast that Shawn didn't even see it coming. One moment he was baiting the tall detective, and the next Shawn and his chair were on the floor, his jaw aching from a very solid hit.

_Good for you, Lassie,_ Shawn thought as he heard someone open the door and muscle Lassiter out of the room, shutting the door firmly behind them.

After a moment, Shawn kicked the fallen chair away and started the series of movements that would eventually get him back to his feet. Once he'd finally made it upright, he maneuvered the chair upright with his feet and knees and sat back down. There still wasn't much to look at in the room, so he turned the chair so it was facing the one-way mirror. Let it be said that he was vain, he didn't care - he was still getting used to his reflection.

But when he once again stared at the stranger in the mirror, Shawn frowned. Something was different. It wasn't Lassiter's punch - any swelling or bruising wouldn't show up right away, and once it did it would be hidden by the heavy beard. But something was different, Shawn was sure of it. Quickly he ran his gaze over the him in the mirror, even checking the tattoos, but no, they were exactly as they had been, fantastical animals running up and down his arms, interspersed with swirls of color.

Wait.

Shawn stared, and sure enough, he could finally make out the shapes on his arms, though, once he noticed, he realized that only his left eye could really see them. The shapes were still indistinct and fuzzy through his right eye. Shawn chuckled silently as he met his own gaze and saw exactly what he expected to see: one eye was flat, black, and expressionless, but the other was a crazy mix of grey and gold.

Leaning back in his chair, Shawn stared at the one-way mirror, waiting for someone to notice what he already had.


	10. The Untrained Eye

"I said no contact, Detective," Vick snapped. "Was I not clear?"

"I'm sorry, Chief, but come on!" Lassiter had calmed down the moment he was out of the interrogation room, but he was still pissed. "Look at the guy!"

The Chief turned to look through the mirror, watching as their suspect slowly maneuvered his way to a standing position and then somehow managed to get the chair upright as well.

"He's awfully good at that," Guster remarked.

"He's probably been cuffed a lot before," Henry replied.

"Look, Detective," Vick began again. "I know you don't like this guy. I don't think any of us like this guy."

"He's creepy," Gus interjected, and there were general murmurs of agreement around the room.

"Like I said," Vick continued. "None of us like him, but you can't just hit him because you feel like it."

"He kissed at me!" Lassiter protested, but Vick wasn't swayed. She simply crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him.

"Right," Lassiter finally said, nodding. "I'm sorry."

"You'd better be," the Chief said. "Now I have to find someone else to question him."

"But Chief-" Lassiter began, but Vick cut him off.

"Don't you 'but Chief' me, Detective," she snapped. "I can't put you back in there with a suspect you've already hit once."

Gus shook his head and turned away from the brewing argument. There was no way Lassiter was going to back down from this easily, but Gus didn't have to watch it - it didn't pertain to him. Instead, he turned back to the creep in the interrogation room.

The man, Hart, or whoever he was, was sitting in the hard, straight-backed chair, staring directly at the one-way mirror. He wasn't staring at Gus, which was good, because Gus wasn't sure he'd be able to stay in the room if the guy was looking at him.

The man seemed...not relaxed, per se, but not as tense as he should've been. He was in police custody, suspected of kidnapping, maybe murder, but there he was, sitting relatively calmly in a chair, staring at a one-way mirror like it held the secrets of the universe.

And Gus couldn't tear his gaze away. The guy was weird, and he was creeping Gus out, but Gus couldn't stop staring at him. There was something...off about the guy. Something not right, and not just the whole goth-biker thing he had going on. And whatever it was, it was new - Gus hadn't liked the guy from the moment he'd laid eyes on him, but there hadn't been this sense of wrongness until Lassiter'd hit him.

Had Lassiter triggered something? Was the guy going to go from passive to crazy? What was it that had Gus's hackles up?

"You know," Mr. Spencer said from his position to Gus's right. "Staring at the guy won't tell you where Shawn is."

"I know," Gus replied, still watching the man in the room. "There's just something about this guy...I can't put my finger on it."

Henry Spencer turned to look at his son's best friend, his eyes narrowing in thought. Gus wasn't near as observant as Shawn was, but that didn't mean he didn't have his own instincts, particularly when it came to his childhood friend. If Gus thought there was something off...

"Is there any way I could go in there?" Gus asked, his eyes still fixed on the guy in the chair. Henry opened his mouth to say 'no,' but paused before he uttered a sound. Turning away from Gus for a minute, he took the one step that brought him to where Vick and Lassiter were still holding a heated discussion.

"Detective, you will follow my orders or so help me I'll-"

"Karen," Henry interrupted. "Have you decided who's going to go in there next?"

Lassiter opened his mouth, but shut it again when the Chief glared at him.

"No," she said, turning to Henry. "Do you have any ideas?"

Henry nodded. "Gus was wondering if he could go in there."

"Absolutely not," Lassiter snapped. "There is no way we're letting a civilian in there, let alone Guster."

"Detective," Vick snapped, and Henry winced at the chill in her tone. Lassiter needed to shut up, and soon, if he knew what was good for him. Henry knew that tone, it signified the end of Karen Vick's patience, and the next person to cross her would be finding that out the hard way.

"Henry," the Chief said, meeting his gaze levelly. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"No," Henry admitted. "But Gus wants to go in there, and my gut's telling me that it might get us something."

Silence fell in the room as the Chief considered Henry's proposal and everyone else waited for her answer.

"Fine," she finally said. "But I want a uniform in there with him. Someone big." She tilted her head to one side. "Get McNabb."


	11. Revelation

Shawn stared at the one-way mirror for all he was worth. Occasionally he moved his gaze to a different part of the mirror, not being sure who was where on the other side of the glass. All he knew was that the people who were closest to him, who knew him best, were all in one room together. He needed one of them to see his now-naked eye. He needed just one of them to make the connection.

He was startled from his reverie when the door once again clicked open. Shawn knew they wouldn't let Lassiter back in there, not after he'd hit their suspect, but he hadn't expected Buzz to walk through the door. Shawn's first impulse was to grin at the big man, but then he remembered the stony silence and glowering expression the officer had worn on their trip through the station.

The grin died long before it reached Shawn's lips.

Shawn watched the door, waiting for Juliet to enter, or maybe the Chief. Someone who had a bit more rank than Buzz would have to conduct the interrogation, and with Lassiter out of the running, the two women were the most likely choices. Once again, however, Shawn was surprised.

The person who followed Buzz into the room wasn't Juliet. It wasn't Chief Vick.

It was Gus.

As always impeccably dressed in a grey suit and lavender dress shirt, Gus strode into the interrogation room as cool as a cucumber...though he pulled the second chair a ways back from the table before sitting down. Shawn let loose a mental chuckle at his friend's wariness even as he applauded the panache. Really, Shawn was proud of his best friend for walking into a room with a suspected kidnapper and sitting down like he did that sort of thing every day. Wrapping his feet around the legs of his chair, Shawn maneuvered it around so that he faced the table and his still-distant friend.

Of course, it all went downhill from there. Sure, Gus had the entrance down pat, but once he'd gotten settled in the chair, he just sat there, staring at Shawn. Not that Shawn minded - it was a break from the questions that he couldn't answer, but still, just sitting? Hadn't Gus learned anything over the past few years? Or from ANY cop show?

After a few very long, silent seconds, Gus scooted his chair a little closer to the table, peering at Shawn. Then he scooted forward a bit more, close enough that he was finally at the table.

Then he started to lean forward.

Okay, maybe Shawn needed to rethink his opinion of Gus's interrogation skills, 'cause Gus hadn't said a word, but Shawn was creeped out enough that, if he could speak, he would've answered anything Gus had asked, just to stop him from inching closer and closer.

But Shawn couldn't speak, and Gus didn't ask anything anyway, he just kept leaning forward, his gaze darting over Shawn's face like it was some kind of strange puzzle that he just couldn't quite get.

When Gus leaned so far forward he was past the center line of the table, Shawn leaned back in his own chair, but Gus just kept coming until his nose was almost touching Shawn's.

_Uh, personal space, buddy?_

_

* * *

_

Something was off. Gus KNEW something was off. And whatever it was, it was right here, in this guy's face. Some expression, some mark or mole or SOMETHING.

Gus let his gaze roam over the guy's face, but he couldn't see what it was that was bothering him so much. Sure, the beard was ugly, as was the guy's hair, and that nose ring was just plain weird, but it hadn't changed; it wasn't the problem. Finally Gus's gaze flicked up to the weird guy's eyes.

Whoa. Okay, that was it.

The guy had two different colored eyes. One of them was that flat black that had been unnerving all of them since they'd first seen it, but the other...

The other eye was a mixture of grey and gold, a strange whirl of colors so familiar that Gus would know it anywhere.

Startled, Gus pulled back, still staring at that one familiar eye.

"Shawn?" Gus whispered tentatively. It couldn't be, he was wrong, he had to be.

But the guy in the chair broke out into a huge grin, and that, too, Gus would know anywhere.

"Shawn!" he cried, and within seconds Gus was on the other side of the table, his arms wrapped around his best friend.


	12. An Impossible Crime

If Shawn thought the nightmare was finally over, he rethought pretty quickly. The second Gus decided to let his long-lost friend breathe again, he started asking questions.

"Shawn, where have you been?" he began, his eyes flicking back and forth as he examined his friend. "We've been worried sick!"

Shawn, of course, said nothing. _I can't believe,_ he thought, _that after hours of asking me questions and getting no response, they still haven't figured out that I CAN'T respond._

With his hands still cuffed behind his back, though, he couldn't even write what the problem was or point to his throat or anything. All he could do, in fact, was nod, shake his head, and smile. To say it was frustrating would be putting it mildly.

"Shawn?" Gus started again, his eyes narrowing as he tried to figure out what kind of game his friend was playing. "Shawn, answer me."

Shawn just pressed his lips together in a grimace and shook his head.

"No? What do you mean, 'no'? Why not?" Shawn glared up at his friend. How, exactly, was he supposed to answer that with a nod or a shake? _Really, Gus? You can't figure out how to ask a yes/no question?_

Luckily Shawn was spared more inept questioning when the room's door opened.

"Mr. Guster!" the Chief snapped as she stood in the doorway. She made no move to actually enter the room. "A word with you, if I may?"

"Oh, there's no need, Chief," Gus said, his voice as reassuring as he could make it. "It's Shawn."

One pale eyebrow climbed up towards Vick's hairline, but the rest of her expression remained calm and controlled.

"I can see that you think that, Mr. Guster, but I'm afraid we have no way to be sure that you're right."

Gus turned back to Shawn, glaring at his friend. "Come on, man, say something," he hissed. "You're makin' me look like a lunatic!"

Shawn raised his own eyebrow at that. It wasn't HIS fault Gus had hugged a kidnapping suspect, though he was sure Gus would find some way to blame him.

"Mr. Guster," the Chief snapped again, and her tone brooked no argument.

"Fine," Gus said, though from his tone it was anything but. Turning back to Shawn, he forced a smile. "Don't worry, buddy. I'll get you out of here."

Shawn smiled back and struggled to his feet. The Chief and Buzz both tensed, but Shawn just turned half around so his cuffed and tattooed arms were towards his friend. Pushing his arms as far in Gus's direction as he could, Shawn balled up one fist.

With a grin, Gus bumped his own fist against Shawn's, then started towards the Chief.

"Hold on a minute, Mr. Guster," the Chief said, and when Shawn glanced at her face, he could see that the coldness of her expression had cracked. She knew what that fist-bump meant as well as anyone.

Without another word, the Chief slipped back through the door, leaving Gus and Shawn tossing confused glances back and forth. Eventually they both turned to Buzz, but he just shook his head.

"Don't look at me," the big man said. "I don't know any more than you do." He paused for a second, seeming to weigh a decision before meeting Shawn's eyes and smiling. "But it's good to have you back, Shawn," he said, and Shawn grinned. It was nice to have the old Buzz back, too.

Before anything else could be said, the Chief walked back into the room, this time trailing O'Hara and Shawn's dad.

_Oh, fantastic,_ Shawn thought wryly. _Because my dad'll make this BETTER. Right._

Taking one look at their shuttered expressions, Shawn found himself backing warily away from the table and the three people lining up behind it. Barely an hour earlier it had taken two uniforms to keep his father from ripping his head off, and now the only thing between them was a table. Two months earlier, Shawn never would've believed his father could hurt him, at least not physically, but now he wanted a bit more distance between them. Just in case.

"Come on, Karen," his father exploded suddenly, one hand waving at Shawn, who was now pressed against the room's far wall. "Does that honestly seem like Shawn to you?"

Shawn sighed to himself. No, he wasn't being his normal happy-go-lucky self, but then happy-go-lucky and accused of kidnapping by your friends and family didn't really go together well.

"It's Shawn, Mr. Spencer," Gus put in. "I'm sure of it." And then, as all good best friends everywhere are wont to do, Gus strode across the room to stand next to Shawn, crossing his arms and glaring at the other people in the room.

"Gus!" Henry snapped. "Get back here! That man is a suspected kidnapper!"

"I don't know, Henry," the Chief said before Gus could yell at the elder Spencer. "The height's right, at least, and Mr. Guster seems awfully certain."

Henry snorted derisively. "Gus is desperate to find his lost best friend. He'd believe anyone was Shawn."

"HEY!" Gus protested, and Shawn stuck out his tongue and blew a very noisy raspberry.

Everyone in the room froze.

"Sounds like Shawn to me," Juliet said into the ensuing silence.

"Then why isn't he talking?" Henry asked, suspicion still coating his voice.

"I don't know, but unless we take the cuffs off, he can't even gesture or write anything."

Shawn started nodding frantically. _Yes! Go Jules! Take the cuffs off, PLEASE!_

"Looks like he likes that idea," Gus said. Henry snorted, but for once said nothing, and Vick, after a moment's deliberation, nodded.

"Fine, O'Hara," the Chief said. "Take off the cuffs."

Juliet nodded and strode across the room, though Shawn noticed the slight hesitation in her steps. She still didn't quite believe Gus's assertion.

_How hard is it to look beneath the surface?_ Shawn wondered as the little blond detective unfastened the metal bands from his wrists. Shawn almost groaned as the cuffs fell away from his hands, but that would only result in another nasty shock to the throat.

It would've made sense to ease back into motion after having his arms in the same awkward position for so long, but Shawn couldn't. Instead his hands flew immediately to the back of his neck where the closure for the stupid shock collar was. He fumbled with bits of metal and leather for a moment before his fingertips came to a rectangular lump of metal attached to a heavy loop.

_What the hell_? he screamed in his mind. _Who LOCKS a collar?_

Even knowing it would hurt like hell, Shawn was seriously tempted to scream in frustration. Instead, he crumpled to the floor and put his head in his hands.

"Shawn? Shawn!" Gus crouched down beside his friend, worry coating his voice.

"Don't get too close, Gus!" Henry called as the rest of the people came forward to see what was wrong.

"Just shut UP, Mr. Spencer!" Gus snapped before turning back to his friend. "Shawn, what's wrong?" Without lifting his head, Shawn pulled out one of his hands and gestured at the back of his neck.

"What? What's that supposed to mean? Shawn!"

Luckily, Juliet had followed Shawn's gesture, so while Gus was still futilely trying to get his friend to answer him, the small detective glanced at the back of the crumpled man's neck, where a small padlock hung from the studded collar.

"That's weird," Juliet said as the Chief and Buzz crowded around them.

"What?" the Chief asked, and Juliet pointed towards the dull metal.

"It's like this collar is locked on," she said. For a moment she fell silent, her eyes flicking back and forth as she put the pieces together. Suddenly she froze, her eyes going wide and her jaw dropping. "Oh," she said, turning her face up to where the Chief was standing over her. "It IS locked on."

"Why would someone lock a dog collar on someone?" Gus asked, but Juliet just shook her head.

"I don't know, but it can't be good." Setting a hand on one brightly colored shoulder, Juliet caught Shawn's attention.

"Shawn?" she began tentatively. "Do you know what this collar is for?" Shawn nodded slightly, and Juliet bit her lip. She had no idea where to go from there, no idea of how to ask what she needed to ask.

"Shawn, what's the collar for?" Gus blurted, coming to the rescue. Shawn lifted his head from his hands to see Juliet staring at his best friend, her expression clearly saying that she thought the man was an idiot. Shawn couldn't fault her - Gus had, once again, asked a question Shawn couldn't answer.

Or had he? Shawn considered the situation for a moment, then lifted his hands. Staring straight at Gus, he made a talking motion with one hand, then he wrapped his other hand around the wrist, immediately stopping the talking motion. After repeating the sequence a few times, Gus finally got it.

"The collar keeps you from talking?" he asked, and Shawn nodded vigorously. "How?"

Shawn suddenly stiffened and started to shake in a very credible impression of someone going into convulsions. When he stopped, Gus frowned, then moved in closer to examine the studded collar, fingering the thick leather band.

Suddenly, Gus's eyes went wide and he rocked back on his heels.

"Oh my God," he said.

"What?" Juliet asked, instantly nervous.

"It's a shock collar. You know, one of those collars you put on dogs to stop them from barking."

Shawn smiled wryly and tapped his nose with a finger. At the far side of the room, someone laughed.

"If I knew that was all it took to shut Spencer up, I'd have gotten one years ago," Lassiter said. Four pairs of eyes glared at the detective, who held up his hands. "What?"

"Since you're not busy, Detective," Chief Vick said carefully, "why don't you go find something to help get this lock off?"

Lassiter grumbled, but turned on his heel and left the room.

Shawn grinned as he watched Lassie stalk angrily away, then decided that he'd had enough of sitting on the floor. His arms and shoulders were still understandably stiff, but he managed to push himself to his feet and make his way back to the table in the center of the room. The Chief sent Buzz to get some more chairs, and a few minutes later they were all seated around the interrogation room's metal table.

No one seemed to be in a hurry to ask Shawn what was going on, which was fine with him. In the silent minutes while they waited for Lassiter to return, Shawn examined his friends' faces.

Jules was...relieved, yet worried, and Gus mostly mirrored her expression. Chief Vick seemed calm, but there were undertones of intense curiosity, and his dad...

...well, his dad looked pissed, but when did his dad ever NOT look pissed?

"Dude," Gus suddenly murmured into the silence. "Could you get rid of that contact? The black eye is disturbing."

Grinning, Shawn tilted his head forward and removed the contact, blinking heavily for a moment as his eye adjusted to actually being able to see again. A collective sigh went around the table, and Shawn raised a questioning eyebrow. It was Juliet who answered.

"I didn't realize how creepy those black eyes were until you got rid of them," Juliet explained. "Weird how something so small could matter so much."

Apparently that was all the small talk Henry could take, because between one second and the next he'd exploded. Shawn, used to his dad's tirades and tired of looking like a biker bar reject, mostly ignored him and started removing the stupid studded wristbands.

"Okay kid, out with it," Henry snapped, putting his arms on the table and leaning over it towards his son. "Why'd you do all this?" Shawn rolled his eyes - leave it to his father to assume that he'd done this on purpose.

"What?" Gus asked, shocked.

"Oh come on, Gus, isn't it obvious?" Henry said. "The reason we never found anything was because Shawn ran off on his own! Tattoos? Piercings? Classic Shawn rebellion. And then, once he got tired of playing biker-boy, he showed up right back here, in front of the station, on his own motorcycle with his own wallet." Henry slammed his hands on the table for emphasis. "This is just another of Shawn's stupid stunts."

Still ignoring his father as best he could, Shawn reached up with numb fingers and fumbled with the aforementioned piercings, quickly finding that it was hard to remove metal you'd never really seen up close.

"Does Shawn normally lock a shock collar around his neck?" Juliet asked pointedly.

"Well-" Henry began, but the detective wasn't done yet.

"Does he generally starve himself? 'Cause he seems a LOT thinner than he was the last time we saw him."

"No, but-"

"Look at his hair, Mr. Spencer," Gus pointed out. "Even if Shawn wanted to dye his hair black, which," Gus gestured towards Shawn's face, which had twisted into an expression of untempered disgust, "seems unlikely, he'd never let it get that long, or that greasy."

Shawn shuddered just thinking about it. Dyed was bad enough, but greasy...eeeeeeew. Shaking his head and trying not to think about the clumps his hair must be in, he went back to work on the stupid piercings.

Luckily, Gus's argument seemed to be working. It was working well enough, at least, that Gus was able to focus his attention on his friend fumbling with the pieces of metal embedded in his ears. Sighing loudly, Gus swatted Shawn's clumsy hands away and started removing the studs himself.

"Okay well MAYBE you have something there, Gus." Henry examined his son again, taking in the heavy black beard and lank locks. "Kid's always been obsessed with his hair."

"Exactly," Gus agreed, dropping a stud onto the table.

"And that beard is pathetic."

"Yes, it is."

A heavy silence fell but for the clank of studs on the table until Henry sighed and finally relented.

"Okay, Gus, maybe you have a point."

"I'm sure we'll find out more when we get that collar off," Vick said, and Shawn nodded a few times. The chain banged against his face as he did, and he grimaced and reached up to try and figure out how to get the ring out of his nose.

A few minutes later Shawn was finally metal-free. He smiled up at Gus and thanked him with a fist-bump before tossing a glare at the little pile of metal on the table in front of him.

It was the perfect time for Lassiter to show up.

"I've got a set of lock picks and a pair of bolt cutters. Which would you prefer?"

"Bolt cutters," Henry said, holding out a hand in clear demand. Lassiter glanced at the Chief, but she just nodded. Shrugging, Lassiter handed the cutters over, and Shawn bent his head forward to give his father better access to the lock.

For something that had been a pain in his ass for a month, removing the collar was pretty anticlimactic. A single heavy snip and the lock was broken and pulled off. While Henry put the bolt cutters and the bits of lock on the table, Juliet reached out with nimble fingers and worked the stiff leather out of its keepers. Seconds later, the collar was unbuckled.

Unbuckled, but not off. Once Juliet finished unfastening it, Shawn reached up with both hands and held the collar in place, grimacing.

"What, Shawn?" Juliet asked, concerned. "I thought you wanted it off."

Shawn nodded, then bit his lip and took a deep, steadying breath. Yes, he wanted it off, but... Slowly, carefully, Shawn began the laborious process of pulling away the thick strip of leather that had begun to embed itself in his skin and the metal spikes that had punctured his neck. He was completely focused on his task, peeling the leather and metal away inch by burning inch, so Shawn didn't notice the looks of horror that passed over the faces around him. It was just as well, perhaps, because even Lassiter's eyes went wide when he saw the welts and abrasions the collar had hidden, not to mention the small puncture wounds that started to bleed once the terminals were removed.

Once he was done, Shawn gratefully heaved a massive sigh of relief. It had been a month since he had even been able to sigh properly, let alone talk.

"Officer McNabb, if you could get a first-aid kit," the Chief ordered quietly, and Shawn smiled at her in thanks. Part of him wanted to rub at his throat, but he knew that rubbing the already-abused skin was probably a bad idea, and it wouldn't help anything anyway, so Shawn ignored the impulse.

There was something else Shawn shouldn't do, but he just couldn't help himself.

Swallowing a few times to make sure his throat wasn't too dry, Shawn spoke into the silence, ignoring the raspiness of his voice and the way it kept cutting in and out.

"You _do_ know you arrested me for kidnapping _myself_, right?"

* * *

Author's Note: That's it, that's the last chapter. Well, the last but for the epilogue, of course...then it's REALLY done


	13. Epilogue: Cover Art

**WARNING**: Spoiler (a really tiny one) for "Bounty Hunters!"

Author's Note: Well, this is it. A big thanks to all of you who've reviewed, and also thanks to those of you who read but didn't review - I appreciate the time you took to read my little story. And now, here's the epilogue, winner of the cheesiest ending award.

* * *

Shawn rolled out of bed, groaning at the time. Honestly, who gets up at 11?

He trudged to the bathroom and flicked on the light, blinking blearily at the reflection in the mirror.

Even six months after he'd been dumped in front of the Santa Barbara Police Department, Shawn was still thankful every time he looked in the mirror and saw himself looking back. Some of it had taken time - that damn dye had proven to be extremely permanent - but by now pretty much everything was back to the way it'd been before he'd been taken. The piercings had all healed closed, and his perfect tan and perfect hair were both once again back to their full swoon-worthy states.

He'd gained a bit of weight back so he wasn't quite so cadaverously thin, though he was still quite a bit lighter than he'd been before the month in the basement. That was probably due to the running. Strangely, Shawn had decided that he actually liked the daily (twice daily?) jogs that his captor had forced on him, and he'd kept up with it. He found a nice run actually settled him and helped him think. Who knew?

Everything that could get back to normal was back to normal. Which just left the tattoos.

Shawn glanced at his arms as he stripped off his t-shirt and turned on the shower. Once he'd finally gotten out of the station, he'd pulled out a mirror and taken a close look at the ink on his arms, memorizing every detail. Though Shawn had never felt the need to get a tattoo himself, he could appreciate the time and artistry that had gone into the images on his skin. Mostly they were animals, everything from exotic creatures like sharks and lions to the truly fantastic like dragons. Every last one was etched into his arm in loving detail, interspersed with heavy swirls of color that shouldn't have looked right but somehow managed to balance the whole thing out.

Shawn was still kind of ambivalent on the whole tattoo issue. On the one hand, he had been permanently marked (some would say scarred) against his will, and that pissed him off to no end. On the other hand, they were kind of cool, and Stokes (because once he thought about it, who else could it have been but the tattoo artist whose family had left him?) had obviously taken great care in creating them.

Even though they were neat, Shawn tended to keep them covered. Long-sleeved shirts were the norm for him now, even in sunny Santa Barbara, otherwise he got a lot of weird looks. Usually, Shawn liked any kind of attention, weird or otherwise, but this was different. This was people judging him because of something he had nothing to do with, something that had been done to him. So, long sleeves it was.

Sometimes the tattoos came in handy (he'd actually gone into a biker bar and no one'd hung him by his ankles!), but most of the time, it was easier and less stressful to just keep them covered.

That was a new feeling - Shawn had never worried about what was stressful and what wasn't before, but now...something was different. Not a lot different, of course, Shawn hadn't completely changed, but sometimes, when he was at his dad's or when he and Gus were working a case or when he was at the station with Lassie and Juliet and the Chief...sometimes there was just the slightest hesitation. Sometimes there was just the tiniest hitch in his stride, in his breathing, in his easy smile, when he looked at someone he'd known for years and some tiny part of him wondered if he could ever really completely trust them again.

That was what Stokes had wanted, that uncertainty. He'd wanted Shawn to know what it was like to have the people you thought you knew turn on you because of the way you looked.

Stokes had told him so.

The letter had been waiting for him when he'd finally gotten home, after spending hours in the police station writing down everything he remembered about his time in captivity. It was postmarked that day from the local post office, but Shawn knew that Stokes was long gone, and he didn't bother telling anyone about the letter. It wouldn't help them find him, and whoever he showed the letter to would insist on actually reading it.

Shawn didn't want anyone else reading the letter. It wasn't that it taunted him or revealed intimate details about him or anything like that. No, the letter was strangely polite and distant. Even so, when Stokes asked if Shawn liked the tattoos, when he said that he was very proud of what would end up being his last, greatest work, Shawn actually felt a kind of strange kinship with the man. Stokes had somehow managed to do just what he wanted: Shawn got how he felt, and that created a sort of…understanding. Having anyone else read the letter seemed wrong.

Turning off the water, Shawn got out of the shower and toweled himself dry. He brushed his teeth, whipped his magnificent mane into unparalleled perfection, and got dressed. Today's long-sleeved shirt was dark blue, dark enough that not even a hint of the tattoos would show through. The Chief had called him in on a case, and he tried to keep those little reminders covered when he was in the station. Not all of the police knew what had happened. Not all of them would understand.

There had been some changes around the station after the Spencer kidnapping fiasco, as it had come to be called, the first of which was a week-long seminar on humane treatment of suspects that had been mandatory for all police employees (including consultants). It had actually been Lassiter's idea. Though he'd seemed blasé at the time, the whole situation had really unnerved the head detective. He didn't understand how he, with his years of training in observation and looking beyond the obvious, hadn't seen who Shawn was from the moment he'd brought him into the station. He was also more than a little disturbed by the way he'd treated Shawn. By the time the consultant was ready to go home after filling out the required forms, large, ugly bruises had bloomed on his face and chest, and both of them were courtesy of Lassiter. A month with a kidnapper, and Shawn didn't have a single bruise. An hour with Lassiter, and he was black and blue.

It was probably that realization that had finally gotten Lassiter to start organizing the seminar.

Shawn smiled to himself. He was proud of Lassie - the guy had been really hard on himself after what'd happened, but he was a better cop because of it. The head detective was doing his best to stop seeing only the surface of the people he brought in, and he was much more careful in the handling of suspects.

Of course, sometimes Lassie still got a little carried away with suspects who looked particularly tough or dangerous. That was to be expected - no one changes overnight. When he did, though, Shawn would just roll up his sleeves. That was all it took to remind Lassie not to judge a book by its cover.


End file.
